Faulty data misled pilot in Brazil-France crash

Source: AP-Excite

By CECILE BRISSON and ANGELA CHARLTON

LE BOURGET, France (AP) - A pilot facing faulty data and deafening alarms in an oversea thunderstorm pitched his plane sharply up instead of down as it stalled, then lost control, sending the Air France jet and all 228 people aboard to their deaths in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.

The fatal move was part of a chain of events outlined in a report by French investigators Thursday that could have legal consequences for plane-maker Airbus and airline Air France - and could change the way pilots around the world are trained to handle planes manually.

"I don't have control of the plane at all," the pilot said, a minute before it crashed, according to a particularly gripping passage in the 224-page report.

Families of victims struggled to digest the report, the final of several studies into the crash by the French air accident investigation agency, the BEA. Some were disappointed that it didn't focus more on manufacturing problems and lay so much blame on the pilots.

In this Sunday, June 14, 2009 file photo shows workers unloading debris, belonging to crashed Air France flight AF447, from the Brazilian Navy's Constitution Frigate in the port of Recife, northeast of Brazil. The French air accident investigation agency BEA is releasing its final report Thursday July, 5, 2012 into the crash of the Airbus A330 jet en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris that killed 228 victims. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

4. I agree

I really like Boeing's idea better: Simply let the pilot fly the plane always. The Airbus idea expects the pilot to only genuinely fly when they're experiencing the worst, most stressful conditions. It makes no sense to me.

3. Comes down to..

.... failure to execute the mandatory checklist on loss of airspeed indication.

Also the the stall warning sounded unacknowledged some 70 times plus a lack of of handling experience, both in non-normal operations and manual flight. It states that the the senior copilot had last performed a manual landing over two months before the accident flight.

All they needed to do was manually maintain the pitch attitude and thrust setting in response to unreliable airspeed.

5. This. n/t

6. I have always feared it would come to this...

...when they started making planes of the, "fly by wire", design. Meaning that all control of flaps and rudder, etc... is by electric wire to servos and motors that, "normally", were controlled by steel cables and hydraulics. So when there are electrical problems/shorts in system/computer malfunction you are SOL. I recall that initially they made some planes with both systems installed so as to minimize the fear of the unknown, imho.